terriloui

Terri Long – Telling lost stories with found objects.

Tag: collage

November 8, 2025

Terri and the Teeny Tinies

Opening Reception, TTT8, September 5, 2025

Happy to reflect upon participating in three of the annual fundraising Teeny Tiny Trifecta shows at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA.

What makes a Teeny Tiny Trifecta?
One part alliteration, one part one artist, one part (well, three parts) small art. And weeks of behind the scenes machinations and mystery by staff.

Magnolia series, TTT6, 2023

Smaller works, some quite diminutive in early years, and three in number, from each participating artist. Started eight years ago, w/ 70+ artists, all works 10″ or smaller, filling two walls in the smaller Dove gallery within Second Street.

2025, the 8th year, largest gathering yet, with all works uniformly 8″ square or round, filling three full walls in main gallery, w/ over 600 works. Amazing to behold, kudos to Executive Director and Curator Kristen Chiacchia and staff.

Opening Reception, TTT8, September 5, 2025

My first visit to the Second Street Gallery was decades ago. It held space within the McGuffey Art Center, main floor with tall, lofty old windows. Literally old school, as the McGuffey building transitioned from being an elementary school in 1975. Leah Stoddard was the first curator, director I remember meeting. She was key in celebrating Second Street’s 30 year anniversary and the transition to a new, larger space in a brand new building nearby on Water Street.

My first time with art on Second Street walls? I actually can’t remember all the specifics. Save for two photos, showing me, and my Cerulean Book Quilt on the walls of the Dove Gallery, some group show (silent auction?) in 2008. Grateful for the digital archive, when memory fails.

Grateful to these women, moments before the gallery filled up, they unknowingly gifted me a glimpse of their quiet moment, stooping to read, see, view my three TTT8 works. By the time the show concluded, there were a trio of red dots shadowing my works. Fundraiser funds were raised. Teeny tiny fun was had.

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August 21, 2025

new art. in Scottsville. [visual artist with writer’s block]

I’m not a writer. I do write, but no one else has to read my sporadic journal entries. I’ve created new art that needed titles. And this post needs verbiage and a succinct title, preferably referencing my visual art below. But I got nothing.

I’ve had difficulty naming the new art, had internal resistance to doing promotion, as I’ve felt tongue-tied and a-stammering.

Yet I persist. I like my art. I do actually want to get images out there, giving details on my current gallery show, and beckoning people to come to the gallery. Thus, here are place-holder words and titles, until my writing mojo returns.

“Everyone is clever nowadays.” And everyone can get tongue-tied. So be it.

This solo gallery show in the Town of Scottsville came together in a couple of very short weeks. And with several works nearly completed, I chose to concentrate on finishing and framing over promotion.

The fine folks at SCAN and Gallery on Valley hosted an opening reception. It went really well. I made my way through the artist talk, took some goofy pix with friends and PHEW, that initial thrust was over.

This show continues ’til Sept. 7th, stop by some time, please and thank you!
I will be gallery sitting on Sat Aug. 23rd from 10am – 4pm and on Sun. Sept. 7th from 12 – 4pm.

Gallery At Valley SCAN / Scottsville Center for Arts and Nature
460 Valley Street, Scottsville, VA 24590
Gallery Hours:  Thursday, Friday and Sunday 12 – 4pm and Saturday 10am – 4pm 
And by Appointment: getcurious@svilleartsandnature.org

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February 3, 2024

Flora Fauna Furniture – my foraging art of salvage

Stepping outside, in tall boots or sandals, with a curious mind, wearing gloves and sunscreen, I begin.

In the fields near our home, I came across an office chair. It was visible in the tree line off a field, apparently a dump site. Plenty of glass, cans, general household trash. I’ve been trekking there through all seasons, fascinated by the moss and seedlings determined to inhabit, reclaim, transform the chair.

Looking for ways to work, create within the natural world, I’m inspired by decades of work by Andy Goldsworthy, Patrick Dougherty’s Stickworks, Maya Lin’s installations and monuments, Christo’s wrappings, and the Spiral Jetty guy (must look up his name again. did that, Robert Smithson)

We stay at a lodge on a remote island on the Chesapeake Bay in November, first time in Nov 2017. I’ve been fascinated by the littoral beach, shifts and erosion of the coast line and the trash and tangled lines that wash in with the tide. Choosing to replicate, interpret what I encounter, I create installations, embracing the temporary, photographing the work, then allowing nature to reclaim it. Earth Art. Mother nature, she rocks.

Sometimes when the poison ivy, greenbriar and bugs aren’t fierce, I tinker with rusted metal, salvage some choice iron, for scrap or future use. I do love discovery aspect and try not to descriminate with found objects.

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January 17, 2024

Coming in clear, good reception

January weather conceded a little for our 5 to 7pm Opening Reception for Cut Up and Put Together, Jan 12th at Staunton Augusta Art Center. 

No snow or ice, temps well above freezing, but plenty of rain. And the Staunton & Valley folks were not deterred. They showed up strong, engaged, smiling and ready to see new art. Speaking for myself, but perhaps the 4 other artists too, I’m beholden to all for the community support. Gush. It was really great. Really.

After the reception, the umbrellas were back out, we enjoyed a great dinner with Charlottesville friends and DC family. Barry and I came back to gallery on Saturday to catch some images in the natural light.

Images of my collage, assemblage, sculptural works at SAAC gallery can be viewed here, Cut Up and Put Together.

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January 10, 2024

And then there were Circles

As 2019 was ending, I worked at a hydroponic greenhouse. I noticed several boxes of these cardboard discs, that arrived in some shipment as packing filler. I diverted some discs from recycling and hefted them to our empty, new old home.

Use what you got, right?! When materials were scarce during the quiet, at-home times of 2020, I realized that what I had in abundance, were circles. Little brown cardboard discs, in a huge plastic bag, in a closet, awaiting a purpose.

By now, I had acquired replacement scissors and piles of colorful printed catalogs arriving by snail mail.

And so I started again, playing, making art, playing mostly. I traced the cardboard discs, cutting up everything of interest I could find. I positioned myself in a comfy chair by the window, sorted the stacks on my new lap desk. I traced and cut, traced and cut with an antique metal Holly Hobby trashcan filling at my feet.

In 2022, I counted over 6100 circles that I had traced and cut, now sorted into old blueberry, pumpkin seed or microgreens style plastic containers. By 2023, I had probably cut about 3500 more.

In 2022 and 2023, a few circles made it onto collages shown and sold at the vast and varied Teeny Tiny Trifecta group shows at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville.

In early January 2024, 3 days ago, I delivered plenty of multi-circle collages, rustic assemblages and sculptures for the just-about-to-open show at Staunton Augusta Art Center. Come see Cut Up and Put Together, January 12 – February 17, 2024.

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July 18, 2023

Fabrications 2006 – 2016

I found a cache of my older art images and seeing them again is like seeing a lost but not forgotten friend.

I’ll never be reunited with the art lost to our Dec. 2018 house fire, but these digital versions are bringing all the best parts back to me – like a big old, grinning bear hug with my BFF.

My Fabrications came about in 2005 after saying YES YES YES to hand-me-down bags of old family linens. I was inspired by handling the doilies, placemats, linen napkins and tablecloths. Most were used, some worn or torn, all having concluded the domestic, formal era. I saw these linens as material ripe for repurposing – viable with integrity, great appeal and creative value.

I never quite learned to sew in my early years. I dabbled but mostly watched my Mom work her mending magic by hand or at her Singer sewing machine.

My artistic approach to working with these fabrics as an adult, was to disassemble then cobble together, randomly mix-and-match, in an outsider, Great Auntie-shocking, reimagined way – with a nod to my grandparents domesticity and a middle finger to cultural affluenza.

I showed the Fabrications at the Arts Center in Orange, April 2006. I hung 18 pieces in the show, sold 4, and taught a shadow-box collage workshop with 10 like-minded, collector attendees.

I showed the Fabrications closer to home in September 2016 in a little shop on Valley Street in Town of Scottsville.

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June 28, 2016

Stu-stu-studio, Extended Play

Necklace-5689
How do you condense three rooms worth of art supplies and ephemera into one room?

Slowly. With gentle, brutal focus, a huge trashcan, an 80s Pandora playlist. Shuffle, repeat. Breathe, switch to Tom Waits, repeat. Haul and purge, repeat.

JewelyContainers

OldStuio01

Decades worth of amassing creative tools & bits & bobs. I am now methodically sorting, purging, discerning the quick and the dead, the loved and abhorred in a blackstrap molasses move up (and down) two flights of stairs. Exhilarating and liberating when a trash bag gets tied up and permanently moved out — mentally exhausting when I hold a valued thing and replace it on another undecided pile.

Yes, Marie Kondo it gave me joy, still does, now Hell’s bells, where does it go?

I am not thinking of arson. But I ponder a summer bonfire and the phrase “a move is as good as a fire.” I’ve been in this house nearly 18 years. I move physically at the gym, not so much at home.

GreenRoom

MooRoom

StudioDoorway

I hit the pause button, switch gears and attempt to inaugurate my newly painted, purty, as yet uncluttered space. Create in the midst of the chaos? No good, had to pack a ditty bag, head to a friend’s home to exhale, play, drink cider and create.

Successful playdate, I made a lanyard necklace. Encouraging feedback and I’m ready to hone technique, play, repeat.

Necklace-5687

 

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November 3, 2015

Lost and Found – Reception

PVCC-BLL-5600

Such a fine September night for Terri and Rose to meet and greet. Great evening to peruse the show, nibble on shrimp, visit with friends, family and make new art connections. Our joint show at PVCC is coming to an end, pulling down art from the walls on Wed. 11/4/15.

Thanks to Beryl Solla, gallery director who penned this introduction:

“I had the intuition that Deborah Rose Guterbock and Terri Long might be a match made in heaven. Both artists have a unique style that blends powerful imagery and a profound sensitivity to material and process. In this particular instance, both bodies of work look to nature as a rich source of imagery. I feel like I have struck visual gold.

Deborah Rose Guterbock is a versatile artist who is full of energy and vitality. Her work has significant range but is consistent in its reference to the “other”. There is a lot going on in each of her pieces. We see a kind of alchemic blend of materials, imagery and intention. This interesting mix suggests other worlds, other places and other times.

Terri Long continues to explore books as an essential component of her artwork. Her trajectory over the past decade has ranged from sculpture to collage all completed with a commitment to craft and composition. Her work shows a deft hand at combining interesting imagery with clever visual puns and a playful world view.”

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August 26, 2015

Lost and Found at PVCC Sept. 18 – Nov. 4, 2015

 

PostcardSnap1

PostcardSnap2

 

Excited to be part of a two person show opening in Charlottesville on Friday, September 18th. Recent hand surgery has made for a challenging summer and for preparing works, but all is well and I’m psyched to deliver the work in just a few days.

Materials? Discarded library books and ephemera, old text book covers, marbled end papers, leather bindings, one feather, one tiger and quite a few butterflies.

More to come.

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